Changing Dutch policies and decline of the Sia aristocracy
By the 1920s and 1930s, the long standing hold over the economy of the old Sia families, Qiao Sheng par excellence, was systematically destroyed by the very Dutch colonial government they supported . Following Queen Wilhelmina’s speech to the Estates General (the Dutch Parliament) in which she insisted that a “moral debt” was owed to the people of the East Indies, the colonial government implemented its so-called “social policy”. This was aimed at ending feudalism in Java and breaking up the large estates of the Peranakan aristocracy.
It was the Chinese Sias, more than the native aristocracy, who suffered from this measure. The native aristocracy did not own much land, due to their belief that popular influence, rather than ownership of land, was the base of their power. The native aristocracy owes to the Dutch their employment in the civil service. To the contrary, the Dutch compulsory acquisition of Peranakan fiefdoms destroyed many of the older Chinese landowning families. While some successfully managed to get into business, most former Sias-their title becoming obsolete by the 1940s-were swamped in economic power by Totok Chinese. This latter group remains, even today, the most powerful economic group in Indonesia.[6]
Concomittant with the decline of the feudal-type Sias, Chinese Indonesians underwent a process of modernization and of building up Western-type political and social institutions. Chinese Indonesians built the first of their schools in Surabaya in the 1920s-one of the first non-Western schools in Java-and by the 1960s, many Chinese schools had been established in the major cities. The first Chinese newspapers were also printed during this era, and several Chinese political parties were established. These parties ranged from those who saw themselves as part of the Indonesian nationalist movement, and those who felt that Chinese Indonesians were still Chinese citizens - a question that was left unresolved for many decades. [citation needed]